Clark Kent Returns
by Lucillia
Summary: The Kents found Kal-El in 1908. As they say, all things pass in time: Perry, Jimmy, Bruce, Lois, even Clark. And yet, Superman still endures. The thing is, Clark Kent was more than a mask Superman wore at the Daily Planet, and for Superman to be the hero he once was, the hero the world needs, he's going to have to bring Clark back in a world that has long-since passed him by.
1. Prologue: The Bat and the Alien

**Author's Note:** I will tell you right now that I'm far more familiar with the Superman cartoons from the 1940s, the Christopher Reeve films, the Batman movies from the 80s/90s, and the animated series from that era than I am with the comics. As for how this story came about, I had noticed that with each film and comic reboot, they keep pushing Superman's arrival on Earth further and further forward, and wondered exactly how far they can go before they have to set Superman's arrival and adoption by the Kents in the past for there to be a willing suspension of disbelief. Remembering hearing from at least one source that Superman is potentially immortal and would stop aging at one point, an idea began to germinate. An idea of a 106 year-old Superman trying to re-integrate with the society he'd started distancing himself from decades earlier.

I will tell you right now that I don't have a pairing planned for Superman/Clark Kent, so don't ask.

**8-16-14: **When I made Clark's new work partner 1/2 of the kissing couple of chapter 1, I'd intended it to be more of an "awkwardness ensues" thing. Chapter 2 seemed to be drawing too many parallels between Eric and Lois, so I decided to establish that Eric was happily married to the other 1/2 of the kissing couple since, no matter Clark's views on marriage, one thing he is most definitely not and never will be in this story aside from gay is a spouse stealing jerk.

As far as I'm concerned Eric's just one half of a married couple, and whatever Eric and his spouse does in the privacy of their own bedroom stays there, and will not end up on screen.

**Now, on with the story...**

* * *

The snow swirled about him as the wind picked it up from atop the ice, and he shivered in the cold despite the black parka which was rated for temperatures up to fifty degrees below zero. His son who was the current Robin had stitched ears onto the black garment, making it look a bit like a chunky version of his bat cowl. Nobody had known what would be created that night back in 1920 when the Wayne family had taken a shortcut through an alley on their way home from watching The Mark of Zorro, least of all Bruce Wayne. Bruce had been the first, then the first Robin Dick Grayson for a time before he resumed his duties as the first Nightwing, then Damian Wayne through whose line the tradition continued.

The swirling blinding white beneath the Arctic sunlight made him nervous, edgy. Bats belonged in the shadows, in the twilight, the dusk, the darkness. After generations in the night, the Wayne family was practically nocturnal, and some people were beginning to half-jokingly suggest that they were vampires. Neither he nor his were vampires however. He, like his predecessors, was the Dark Knight of Gotham as his son would be after him, and he was so far away from home right now that it wasn't even funny.

The reason he was here was because the world needed a hero. Not his sort of hero though. What the world needed right now wasn't a protector in the shadows, but a hero who could stand in the light, an example to look up to and follow.

He continued forward despite the chill of the Arctic ice that was seeping into his bones. His destination stood before him, the deceptively cold sunlight turning it into a dazzling crystal palace, a thing of beauty that threw out rainbows from every surface. It wasn't a palace however, but a fortress that stood alone at the center of a no-fly zone, inviolate, visitors not welcome. A true fortress of solitude which was occupied by one individual, the person with whom he'd come to talk.

After another hour's walking, he found himself at the threshold. Though the door seemed open, that was most likely not the case. Too many had tried to break into this place both while it was occupied and while its occupant was away. Some had succeeded, most had failed. Right now, he was counting on the...man's former friendship with his great-grandfather in order to get his foot in the door. After checking for obvious traps which he would have to disarm and hoping that he didn't set off any not-so-obvious Kryptonian ones which he would have little to no defense against, he set one foot over the threshold, and then another when an explosion failed to happen.

As he made his way through the fortress, watchful for traps along the way - though it looked like he'd been given permission to enter and have his audience with the Man of Steel - he noted that the place wasn't what he had been expecting. He didn't know what he'd been expecting really, the fortress his grandfather had spoken of visiting, a museum containing artifacts that were related to the life of its occupant, an old person's home complete with pictures of loved ones and little knick knacks scattered about...

Not this.

The place was stark, white, utterly devoid of decoration, and just as cold as the outside, though it felt colder somehow, and there was a pervasive sense of being watched.

Between one second and the next, he'd gone from being alone to finding himself standing in front of Superman, or rather Superman standing before him. The suit hadn't changed all that much over the last seven and a half decades, but the occupant...

Though the being wearing the iconic suit looked human on the surface, there was no mistaking him for a human being. The eyes and the expression were flat, cold, utterly alien. There was no sign of the laughter and occasional mischief he'd spotted in the old photographs from his grandfather's and great-grandfather's day. There was no sign of a man who would pull the occasional good-natured prank on a boy who was too full of himself. Though his face was as ageless and unlined as it had been in the photographs in the family album, was no sign of anything even remotely human about it, unlike the way it had been in those old pictures.

Steeling his nerves, he reminded himself why he had come.

"Superman, we need to talk." he said.

"So, talk." Superman replied in a voice that was devoid of any inflection.


	2. Superman Comes In From the Cold

Gotham city was as dark, crowded, and as noisy as it had ever been. If he hadn't seen evidence otherwise, he would've believed that the city was perpetually covered in grey storm clouds when it wasn't nighttime. Even on sunny days, the daylight seemed off in this place. The buildings in the downtown area were modern steel and glass towers much like in any major city and many others that aspire to be major cities, but unlike Metropolis where designs were lighter and more open and seemed to reflect sunlight everywhere, the architects of Metropolis' seemingly evil twin had subconsciously made the buildings fit in with the ancient darkness that had seemed to surround Gotham since its founding. Gotham's downtown was a monument to shining black Neogothic architecture.

The Gotham Ledger, which was his destination and future place of employment, was smaller and lesser-known competition to the Gotham Gazette. Rather than having practically an entire building to itself the way the Daily Planet had, the Ledger was located in one of the buildings near the Financial district. Most of the newspaper's offices took up space on two of the middle floors of the building, while the printing presses churned out an amazing number of papers day in and day out in the basement. The rest of the building was given over to any number of businesses, including a couple of medical and dental offices.

As he looked up at the building in which the Ledger was located, Superman readjusted his tie wondering for the millionth time exactly why he'd allowed the brat in the bat parka to talk him into this. He hadn't worn a suit and tie since he'd killed Clark Kent off in 1968. By that point, he'd lingered far too long, and people had really been talking about the fact that he hadn't aged all that much since the '40s. Make-up would've been fine for on stage or in front of a camera, but it wouldn't cut it up close and in person, especially since his hair was impervious to dye. The only reason he'd stayed behind had been the children he and Lois had adopted following their marriage and subsequent discovery that having children of their own was most likely impossible no matter how many times they'd tried. Both children had been grown and on their own at that point, so it had become safe to leave.

He hadn't really had any reason to stay for years by the time he'd left. Lois had died of an aneurysm in '62, leaving him with a pair of half grown children he hadn't really known how to deal with without her around to be a combination mother, referee, peacekeeper, occasionally the bad guy when he'd yet again been too permissive, and occasionally the good guy when he'd yet again been a bit too harsh or had forbidden the wrong thing. Lois' death had been a surprisingly quiet death considering, just a few complaints about a bad headache which he'd rather stupidly given her aspirin for rather than searching for a cause, and suddenly, while he'd been typing away at the next desk over, he'd heard her heart stutter and then stop. He'd turned around to find her slumped over at her desk, a page from a half-complete story resting in her typewriter, never to be finished.

Perry had passed before Lois, having had had one too many heart attacks in '59, and in '65, Jimmy Olsen had gone in a car crash while he'd been busy putting out a fire on an oil tanker. While he'd been dealing with the fire in a manner that would currently have Environmental groups up in arms, Jimmy's car had skidded on a patch of road that was slick due to it being the first rain of the season and plowed into a truck carrying produce. Both drivers had been killed. As for Bruce who was ancestor to the brat in the bat parka who'd persuaded him to go through with this charade, decades of hard living had taken their toll on him. One day, he'd completely misjudged his physical capabilities, thinking himself to be as strong as he had been the year before, and didn't make a jump. Fortunately, Damian hadn't been there to see it.

He'd blamed himself for all of these deaths but Perry's for a while, until he'd stopped.

He'd known for years following Clark Kent's death and his subsequent departure to the North Pole that his connection to the humans who'd adopted him and he'd adopted in return was constantly slipping away, and that his self-imposed isolation in the Fortress of Solitude wasn't doing him any favors, but after a while he'd stopped caring. That didn't mean that he'd stopped saving people, never that, he'd never do that, but that he'd stopped lingering to see the results of the good he'd done afterward like he used to - almost reveling in the feeling of pride and accomplishment that followed - stopped going into towns and cities and doing mundane things like buying a pastry and snacking on it as he read a book or magazine at a humanly slow pace, and almost completely stopped interacting with humans outside of situations that were directly related to rescues altogether.

For the last four decades and change, he'd been Superman the hero from Krypton and nothing else.

The brat in the bat parka had said that he'd become frozen like the wasteland he was living in, which was strange coming from Batman. But, then again, the brat in the bat parka wasn't Bruce. For the brat in the bat parka, the cape and the cowl was family tradition, a family obligation towards the city that had been good to them and made them wealthy long before, not a hard-fought crusade against the crime that had been plaguing Gotham which had been germinated when a child had seen his parents be murdered right in front of him. Crime still plagued Gotham, providing a frequent challenge to this current generation's Batman as it did the one the generation previous etc., but not to the level and degree it had back in the olden days, and while there was still the occasional escape from Arkham, security was far better than it had been back in Bruce's day and such things weren't all that frequent.

When this generation's version of Batman had shown up at the Fortress after having spent a long time steeling himself for the confrontation while he was out on the ice, he'd initially planned on letting the brat in the bat parka say his piece and then leave before he got on with his life. The brat had stood there passionately arguing about how the world needed a man who was more than forty-five years dead, and how he needed to be that man at least some of the time. Completely unmoved, he'd stood there and coldly and logically shot down every argument until the words that had come like a slap to the face "How can you still call yourself a hero when all you do is just spin your wheels despite the fact that there's far more that you are capable of beyond simply rescuing people from immediate peril? How can you provide the world an example to look up to when all they see is a burnout who's just been going through the motions for decades?".

He still didn't know why those words stung so much when his heart and his humanity as it were had died for the most part when those who had been closest to him had passed. He still didn't know why he'd agreed to go through with the brat's insane plan, despite the fact that he knew it would just bring him more pain in the long run when his new friends died on him like his previous friends and family had done. He still didn't know why he'd taken the papers and the wallet that identified him as Clark Jerome Kent, son of Johnathan and Martha Kent born 2-29-84, formerly of Kansas City, Kansas and agreed that he would start work on Monday. He still didn't know why he'd actually bothered finding some at least semi-normal clothes to wear and actually come today.

He'd nearly changed his mind a million times since he'd agreed to at the very least try to go along with the brat's plan, and yet, here he was standing around in a business suit headed into the one job Clark Kent was qualified for. The job he'd initially gotten back in the 1930s because aside from the Police and the Government, there was one other profession that tried to find out what was happening when it was happening and be first on the scene. The job that had allowed him to be frequently absent without explanation so long as he had something to show his boss when he returned. The only reason he was here right now was because he'd told himself that it would be very temporary, he'd try and reconnect with the human race as Clark Kent and see if it would go anywhere, and when it inevitably failed to do so, he'd go back to the way things were and live a quiet life where he wouldn't be bothered, wouldn't worry exactly when the person he's talking to is going to die on him, because the person he was talking to was a stranger. Besides, he seriously doubted that people would be fooled by glasses, a slouch, a slightly different walk, a change in the pitch of his voice, him parting his hair in the opposite direction, and a false clumsiness in this day and age.

One of the things that had nearly had him changing his mind and handing the paperwork back to the brat was that using the name Clark Kent again, even if it was only temporary, felt slightly wrong to him somehow. He knew that the brat in the bat parka had chosen the name Clark Kent for a practical reason, because it was the name he'd had since infancy, and therefore would come easiest to him, but he felt that the boy who was in his thirties should've picked another name. Any other name. Clark Kent had been dead and buried for a long time.

Realizing that he'd been stalling outside the building he should currently be inside for far too long and that he was beginning to attract notice, he started moving towards the door again. The Gotham Ledger was no Daily Planet, but since it was owned by the Waynes, he'd been guaranteed a job in an age when everyone was downsizing due to that internet thing which was looking to be a bit more permanent than the latest craze he'd thought it to be. A job that should've gone to someone else since he was only taking it at the brat's request since the brat thought that having work outside of rescuing people was the best way for him to reconnect with people and be the example he used to be, and apparently no-longer was. A job that was probably going to be edged out by some "Blogger" in a few years, so long as that whole "Blogging" thing didn't prove to be the fad that the internet wasn't.

Despite his isolation, he wasn't ignorant of modern society. He'd have to be willfully blind and deaf and probably even have to block his nose to be that. It was just that he never knew what would just be the latest craze, and what would stay a while. Things he'd previously thought would be permanent, enduring, all too often proved not to be. Nowadays, he just let it all pass over him like water over a duck's back. A little might stick here and there, but the vast majority wouldn't.

As he made his way into the building that housed his temporary new workplace, he caught sight of a very public display of affection in the lobby. The couple in question were kissing rather passionately for such a public venue, and he was somewhat disturbed by this latest display of the loose morals and easy promiscuity of this day and age. But, then again, his parents had railed against the lack of morals and open promiscuity of the Roaring 20s. While he'd come of age in the decade that had gone out with one hell of a bang when the bottom dropped of the stock market, he hadn't "become a man" back then, preferring to follow his adoptive father's advice and wait rather than risk catching something from a prostitute or risk getting Lana or another girl into trouble. There had been a few raised eyebrows upon discovery of this fact before he'd married Lois, but none of the comments he would've received in this day and age where doing such before the age of eighteen seemed to be a requirement in American society.

Despite the fact that he was trying to feel something so he could fall back into the role of Clark Kent which had once come so very easily to him, he found that he was still far too apathetic to drum up any real disgust over the fact that both members of the kissing couple were male. Instead, he passed the couple without giving them a second glance or making a sound as he made his way to where his new boss, someone named Gabrielle Watkins, was waiting.

When he reached the office his new Editor in Chief occupied, the woman's expression turned to shocked surprise when she caught sight of him. "You look very..." the woman started before snapping her teeth down over the next word which he was reasonably certain would be "human" before it could be spoken.

"Well," she continued. "I have been briefed on the situation by Mr. Wayne, and you will be shadowing Eric Hernandez until you get on your feet, after which point you will be partnered with him. I am aware of your other job 'Mr. Kent', and I will warn you here and now that if I catch you slacking off for reasons other than your other work, I will treat you like any of my other employees."

"Understood." he replied, noting that the woman had some steel under her almost matronly exterior.

"If you need help with learning how to use the computers, Jason Lee will be happy to help you." Gabrielle said before calling his future partner and getting his voicemail on which she'd left a curt message, and calling and the Lee boy in.

Jason Lee proved to be a redheaded brat who was cut from similar cloth as Jimmy Olsen, and was probably related considering the resemblance. There wasn't a camera in his hand or hanging around his neck the way there would've been with Jimmy however. The kid who couldn't have been older than twenty was carrying a smartphone on which he was texting someone, having apparently mastered the art of navigating without looking at his surroundings, seeing as he hadn't once looked up as he made his way into the office. Considering how expensive smartphones were to replace when broken, the kid would have to be a master of the ancient art of reading while walking. Either that, or made of money.

A well meaning police department had given him an iPhone a couple years back and had taught him how to use it, but it had proven completely useless for their purposes seeing as he often flew to places where it didn't get any reception. Despite the fact that he'd tucked it in his belt and therefore as close to his skin as he could get it without putting it in his clothing, it had ended up being destroyed in under a week. Upon finding out how much it would cost to replace the thing, he'd decided against getting one of his own, or asking for another one.

"I was told you'd need help with the computers." the Lee boy said when he finished sending his text.

"I just need to get my account set up, and familiarize myself with your network." he replied. He could hear Gabrielle's eyebrows raise behind him, and wondered what it was about that statement that was so surprising. Considering one or two of his recent rescues, they should've realized that he was familiar with computers, but then again, from what he'd overheard over the years, he'd gathered that people tended to think he was all brawn and superpowers. While he didn't use them often, and didn't keep one in the Fortress, he was very capable in the use of computers since an annoying and rather condescending technical whiz-kid had given him a crash course back in the '90s. The look on the kid's face when he'd come back for another "lesson" a week later and hacked NASA had almost been amusing at the time.

Following a dismissal from his Editor in Chief who looked and dressed the way one would picture a modern grandmother dressing aside from the bottle blonde hair and the vibrantly red nails, the Lee boy led him to the desk which had been assigned to him. It was as he was getting his password set up and logging into the Ledger's system for the first time that his new partner arrived to introduce himself.

Eric Hernandez was a skinny, conservatively dressed man of about six feet in height who had dark brown hair that was lightly peppered with grey, medium brown eyes, tan skin, and just so happened to be one of the men he'd spotted kissing in the lobby when he'd arrived.

He was pretty certain this had been a deliberate move on his new Editor in Chief's part, though what her motive was, he wasn't sure.


	3. Pushed Back on the Bicycle

Superman put his questions regarding Gabrielle Watkins' motives regarding the assignment of his new partner aside as he introduced himself to the man who was clearly an experienced journalist if he was reading his visual cues correctly. There was no irony or an expression of "_Sure you are_" on Eric Hernandez's face when he'd introduced himself to the man as Clark Kent, just as there had been none on Jason Lee's while the boy had been helping him get set up. Either both the man and the boy whose eyes were currently glued to his smartphone were excellent actors, he'd lost his ability to read people during his isolation, or it had only been the Editor in Chief who'd been let in the loop in regards to his actual identity.

As they went through their introduction, Hernandez who was standing a polite distance from him didn't give him more than a generally appraising look, and he decided that so long as his partner kept things professional and didn't attempt to pursue him, he could keep silent regarding his old opinions on certain "lifestyle choices" which at the moment he couldn't really bring himself to give a damn about, but might end up doing later. In trying to bring Clark back from the dead as that Wayne brat wanted him to do since he thought it would make him a better Superman, he would have to bring who Clark was back from where he'd been buried for so long, which included all of Clark's old beliefs and opinions, many of which might be marginally or fully unacceptable in this modern and fast paced society. Some of those old opinions involved a certain lack of approval for same sex couples which had mostly arose from the pervasive attitude regarding such in the era in which Clark had lived.

In his younger years after he first took up the cape, back when he'd stopped being the farmboy and wasn't certain whether he was Superman or the Journalist who used his job as a means to find out where Superman needed to be to do the most good but also did good with and rather liked his own work, he'd done his best to keep quiet about his opinions on matters such as race, religion, and a woman's place in society when he wore the suit. Back then, he chose to rescue whoever needed rescuing, never passing judgement on those he saved. Instead, he'd reserved his judgement for those who would harm the innocent, enemy combatants, and those who guarded enemy assets. So, it wasn't like he was unfamiliar with the concept of keeping silent regarding something he didn't agree with or believe in.

Back in the old days, when he wasn't in the suit and was just being Clark, he'd been free to air any socially acceptable or socially unacceptable opinion he held regarding any issue under the sun, so long as he either did so in reasonably good taste or did so amongst like-minded individuals. Now, while he couldn't bring himself to care about doing anything more than maintaining at least a semi-believable Clark Kent facade, there was a minute possibility that all could change. Odds were that if that happened, it would have to be Clark Kent and not Superman who would have to watch his tongue, especially if he didn't want to alienate himself from the majority of his "peers".

After introducing himself, Hernandez made some attempts at small talk in an apparent attempt to sound out his new trainee, and get a handle on his character. As Hernandez asked where he'd gotten his "retro" tie which the other man found to be cool, he idly noted that his new Editor in Chief was standing in the doorway of her office watching the exchange like a hawk. He didn't know what she expected or wanted to see, but based on her expression, she clearly wasn't seeing it. Considering their recent meeting, it was entirely possible that the woman was looking for a legitimate excuse to fire him, and him failing to get along with Hernandez or saying something inappropriate about the man's homosexuality, especially to his face, would provide her with that excuse.

He could understand why his new boss would want to fire him. After all, the woman had to know that all of his paperwork was forged by the Waynes who'd ordered her to hire him in the first place, and she had no reason not to believe that all of his qualifications were forged as well. The thing was, his qualifications weren't so much forged as updated, since they were nearly fifty years out of date. His Journalism degree was over eighty years old, and his last job in the field had ended forty-five years ago when he'd killed off Clark Kent.

Considering the fact that he was taking up space that should've belonged to someone whose degree wasn't about eighty years old, old journalistic instincts that had long since gone dormant began actually wondering what his new Editor in Chief thought about one of the Waynes throwing his weight around and hiring Superman himself for a job that appeared to be well outside of the superhero's skill set. A part of his mind he hadn't used in years started analyzing the situation and looking for the right angle to go at it from while another part of his mind was already drafting the "Alfred Wayne Hires Superman as a Reporter!" article, and slipping in the appropriately ironic quotes about how ill suited someone who flew around lifting heavy objects and set things on fire with eye lasers was for such a job.

He was rapidly pulled out of his musing when his new partner informed him that if they didn't get a move on, they'd be late for the Gotham City Ferret Show.

"Ferret show?" he asked, having never heard of such a thing, even in his accidental eavesdropping on the world which he usually tried to tune out while in the Fortress where he focused on more important matters such as where he needed to be next, but couldn't help but overhear when he was out on the sort of rescues that rescue crews couldn't get to without there being mass casualties prior to their arrival if they weren't entirely too late to do anything about the situation in the first place.

"It's sort of like a dog show, but with ferrets." Hernandez replied. "Since you're a newbie and I'm still recovering from last month's stabbing, Gabrielle decided to put us on the show and convention circuit."

"Stabbing?" he asked, mainly because Clark would've asked. As far as Superman was concerned, seeing as he'd never met Hernandez before in his life, it was just yet another thing that he'd missed while his attention was focused elsewhere. Considering the fact that the world wasn't a Utopian society where everybody tolerated everybody else and their life choices, he could easily guess why Hernandez got stabbed.

"A bondage club that was into more than bondage didn't like the expose I did on them." Hernandez replied with a shrug of his shoulders, surprising him, because he'd been expecting something else. "Considering the fact that they don't usually pair a newbie that nobody's ever heard of with an experienced investigative reporter, I'm guessing that Gabrielle assigned you to me in an attempt to keep me out of trouble."

At that, part of his mind went "Oh, God!". It was just his luck that he'd be paired with another danger magnet like Lois. He'd loved Lois, loved her with his entire heart and soul, but when she was hot in the pursuit of a good story she became what was probably one of the most annoying things on the planet. Since she had been completely incapable of keeping herself out of danger for five minutes, he was constantly forced to rescue her as he attempted to deal with the situation she'd uncovered and/or gotten herself involved in. Bruce had often wondered what he'd seen in Lois, considering the fact that she often seemed too stupid to live, but his wife had many sterling qualities, including the fact that she was dangerously competent when she wasn't in mortal danger and was an intellectual match for him.

Considering the fact that his new boss knew who he was, it was entirely possible that he'd been given the Gotham Ledger's danger magnet on purpose. It would be a practical move to use the superhero who was "Playing reporter" as a superpowered babysitter for a reporter who was both actually worth something, and incapable of staying out of danger. If that was indeed the case, it would seem that he'd completely underestimated Ms Watkins.

Riding to the ferret show in an actual car rather than flying there - doing three rescues and buying a bagel on the way - and arriving before his partner the way he used to do with Lois was a trial in patience. He'd tried to split up and go his usual way, but his new partner had insisted they come together, apparently so the man could get to know him and set some ground rules and a few boundaries in regards to their work relationship. Not caring to get in an argument, he'd followed Hernandez down to the parking garage where the man led him to a rather plain looking sedan. The car was neither new, nor old enough to qualify as a classic. It was one of those not too clean nor too dirty vehicles that were kept around and duly repaired rather than replaced because they'd become something like the family pet. Despite the number of dents and scratches the vehicle possessed, Hernandez was rather slow, careful, and methodical for a city driver.

As he sat in the passenger seat of Hernandez's car, he received the "I'm your superior because I have seniority, therefore what I say goes" speech, and the "If you try to steal my work, they won't find the body" speech, as well as the "If you try to steal my office supplies, I will gut you" speech. Lois's versions of all three speeches which she had given him when he'd first arrived at the Planet and been assigned as her partner nearly eighty years before had been far more intimidating, even with their complete lack of profanity and graphic depictions of violence. Part of that reason may have been because she was fully capable of succeeding in a cutthroat environment that had been considered a man's world back then. In those days, a woman had to be nearly ten times as good as a man with the exact same job title, and the men knew it.

The ferret show had started off rather mundanely, and had looked to be a rather boring first day out. Being press, they had been rather warmly welcomed by the ferret owning crowd which had been happy to show their prized pets off to a pair of reporters, even if the medium said reporters worked in was print. Since he was trying to behave as Clark Kent would've done, he duly complimented each animal that was practically shoved under his nose and inquisitively asked the owners, the judges, and the hosts of the event every question Clark would've asked. There was one moment when he figured he must've made a mistake somewhere due to the watchful and somewhat negative reaction he'd received.

What was so wrong with spending five minutes interviewing an eight year-old girl, complimenting her pet, and patting her on the head before moving on to interview someone else? He knew there'd been any number of pedophile scares in recent years, and he had actually dealt with a number of such creatures over his decades as Superman, but seriously? He'd sooner gnaw his own arm off than touch a kid _that_ way.

It had been while he'd been very, very, very carefully handling an oddly colored version of one of the smelly little creatures he'd come to see and complimenting it the way that Clark would've that he realized that Hernandez who'd previously been working the other side of the room was gone. A quick look around with his x-ray vision since he wasn't quite yet attuned to the man's voice revealed that the man had pulled a Lois and found the only bit of real danger for miles. This bit of danger involved a couple of men with guns and what looked like drugs being smuggled in ferret carriers.

After a quick excuse that involved having to use the bathroom and a quick disappearance, Superman was soon on the scene, Hernandez was safe, and a pair of armed idiots were in the custody of police officers who seemed confused as to what the hell Superman was doing there since he'd usually left the small stuff to them, and Gotham was Batman's territory.

After they'd gotten back to the Ledger, Gabrielle Watkins took one look at the first story submitted under the Eric Hernandez and Clark Kent byline and sighed "I sent you out to do a human interest piece about tube rats, and you run into a drug smuggling ring. Only you Eric, only you..."

Seeing Watkins' long-suffering expression, he remembered that twinge of pity he used to feel for Perry every time Lois had done the same thing. Somehow, he didn't think this was a coincidence. Apparently, a certain someone had thought the best way to get him to reconnect with humanity was to stick him in a familiar situation and get him to swing back into things like a man riding a bicycle for the first time in years.

That brat in the bat parka was going to pay.

* * *

A woman who was pushing seventy stared at the newspaper in her hand. Though the name was most likely a coincidence since there were plenty of Kents out there and at least one of them - possibly a Clark Gable fan - was going to name his son Clark, part of her mind still screamed "Daddy!" with childish glee when she caught sight of it. If it was really...If it was really him, she didn't know how she felt about it. She'd always known that she was adopted, and therefore not really his. Not that he was a bad father or anything, just frequently absent when he was there, and after he'd left and didn't come back...It wasn't like she, her children, and the grandchildren were really his...

Still though, she had wished that the man who'd raised her, the man she'd called father, would come back if only just once every day since he'd left.

* * *

**Omake:**

"What the...?! Again?"

"Well, that's more creative than his usual..."

"Why can't Superman find some other government agency to hack when he's bored?"

"Probably because we don't send armed agents to his house every time he does?"

**Omake 2:**

"I need to go iron my dog." he said, not even bothering to come up with a believable excuse for why he was leaving. Considering the fact that he'd used that excuse at the Planet twice during the Fifties and gotten away with it, it was apparently good enough.

"I know I've heard that before somewhere..." Jason Lee said before clicking on the search function on his internet browser and typing in the strange excuse that Clark Kent who half the office was betting was not-so-secretly an axe murderer had made before departing.

"Oh shit, TVTropes! We're not going to see Jason for a week..." Eric said when he glanced over the young intern's shoulder and saw the result that came up.


	4. Clark Kent and Clark Kent

Eric studied his new trainee/future work partner. It was their second day together, and he didn't know what to make of the man. There was something about him that was so completely off that it gave everyone who'd run into him so far the creeps. Sure, he said and did all the right things, but there was a certain emptiness behind it all that made him wonder if Waynetech wasn't testing out a new android or something. Either that, or Jason's theory that the man was a serial killer was spot on. The problem with Jason's theory however was that Kent wasn't superficially charming the way your average sociopath/psychopath in hiding was.

On the surface, the man was attractive and well dressed with a flair for retro and vintage clothing, and the thick framed, horn-rimmed glasses did little to hide his handsome Superman lookalike looks. Beneath the surface however, aside from that one flash of anger that didn't seem to have been directed at him or Gabrielle which he'd caught the day before, there didn't seem to be anything but ice. As to whether the man was straight or gay, he couldn't even begin to guess. His new work partner hadn't shown any attraction whatsoever when a rather beautiful woman had practically thrown herself at him the previous afternoon following the Ferret show debacle which had earned him another front page above the fold article due to the fact that he'd spotted a known drug dealer at the show and decided to follow him. But, then again, Kent hadn't shown even the least bit of interest when Tom had made a pass at him either, and Tom was a very attractive man.

Despite the fact that Tom had a bit of a roving eye, he dearly loved him, and knew full well that despite all of his husband's flirting with other men, it was him that Tom had married, and him that Tom came home to at night.

Looking at Kent's completely orderly workspace, he could see that there were no personal items on the newbie's desk aside from a few basic office supplies that looked like they'd been purchased the night before. But, then again, it was only Kent's second day on the job, and it was possible that the man wasn't yet comfortable enough to start personalizing his workspace with little things like family photos, stickers, and little troll dolls sporting hair in the color of one's favorite sports team.

Speaking of favorite sports teams...

"What's your favorite team?" he asked his partner who was intently glaring at the computer in front of him and occasionally clicking the mouse that his hand practically hovered over as he navigated from page to page.

"Which sport?" Kent asked, not looking up from whatever it was he was doing.

"Pick one." he said.

"The Metropolis Monarchs" Kent said after a moment of thought, still not looking up from his computer screen.

Odd. One would've thought that since Kent was from Kansas City according to the half-complete profile he'd put up on the Ledger's website that his favorite baseball team would've been the Royals. Then again, Kent had gotten his Journalism degree from Met U, which was setting all sorts of alarm bells ringing in his mind for some strange reason. Something to do with his own time in school...

Typing Clark Kent's name into his favorite search engine, he came up with a Facebook page and an old inactive Myspace page that obviously belonged to the newbie, a link to the Daily Planet archives, and a Kent family tree on which Clark Kent 1908-1968, adopted son of Johnathan Kent 1849-1932 and Martha Clark 1852-1933, was married to one Lois Lane 1909-1962 with whom he'd adopted two children Margaret Kent-Thompson (Still Living) and Christopher Kent (Still Living) and had one natural child named Johnathan Kent 1947-1999 who'd married one Martha Clarke 1956-2010 with whom they'd had a son they'd named Clark (Still Living).

Realizing exactly why the name Clark Kent in association with Metropolis had triggered a memory, and realizing that the Kent that was sitting in front of him was just the grandson of the Kent he'd learned about when he was getting his Journalism degree, the alarms quieted down. Clicking on the picture of the original Clark Kent who'd been one half of the famous Clark Kent and Lois Lane duo, he found himself looking at a slightly blurry image of a handsome Superman lookalike type in thick framed, horn-rimmed glasses.

Damned if the family resemblance wasn't downright creepy.

* * *

"G.G.! G.G.! Look! I found a family tree!" Christopher Kent's great-grandson who'd been given the task of drawing up a family tree by a genealogy obsessed teacher yelled from the living-room.

Christopher smiled once again at the pun that was his descendant's slightly disrespectful nickname for him as he headed to look at the family tree that his son's son's son had found. The really amusing part of it all was that his thoroughly American nine year-old great-grandson hadn't done it deliberately when he'd come up with that nickname. Looking over Michael's shoulder at the computer monitor when he reached him, he saw that there was indeed a family tree, a Kent family tree. A somewhat inaccurate Kent family tree.

Exactly what the author of this tree had thought they were doing when they'd tacked on an extra Johnathan and Martha and an extra Clark, he didn't know.

Aside from the fact that there had been no little brother named Johnathan in the house when he was growing up, he knew full well that his parents couldn't have a natural child of their own, which was why they had adopted him and Margaret. Adopting a Japanese child, even an American-born Japanese who didn't pick up any of the language until Vietnam and had considered America to be his home, so soon after the War hadn't done the Kents any favors. Even twenty years later, there had been some nasty comments bandied around the neighborhood that weren't just directed at him. His sister Margaret who was perfectly Caucasian and an All-American girl had even borne the brunt of some of it.

Typing in the name Clark Kent into a search engine, he found a Facebook page and a Myspace page. Clicking on the link to the Facebook page, he found himself looking at a picture of the frequently absent man who'd raised him as his own, not caring what other people said about the fact that he'd done so. The man who'd almost completely shut down after his mother's death and disappeared from his life completely as soon as he was grown up and out of the house.

From what he could see of the picture, it was an old one which had been photoshopped to look like it was modern. He had not seen an expression like that on his father's face since before his mother had died. His father had blamed himself for what had happened, even though it wasn't his fault. While he may have had the powers of a god, he didn't have the omniscient mind of one, and even if he'd thought to look, it would've already been too late. The headache his mother had complained of had been a sign of an already ruptured aneurysm.

For many years, he'd considered October 12, 1968 to be the day his father had truly died. After all, after that date, Clark Kent had been completely gone from the world. Superman may have still been around, but he hadn't been the one who'd raised him.

Picking up the phone, he dialed a number. After three rings, he got an answer.

"Margaret," he said to the woman he usually only talked to around Christmastime "It would seem that our father has finally decided to return to the land of the living."

* * *

Gabrielle watched as the White Elephant that Alfred Wayne had hired as some sort of bizarre social experiment excused himself to use the restroom for the third time that day. How he managed to get any work done, much less submit an article under his own byline, she didn't know. She'd read over the article twice, and though it didn't seem like Eric's writing style...

She scowled slightly at the name on the byline. Clark Kent was a name that came up frequently back when she was in Journalism school. One of her professors had been a big fan of the man who'd been one half of the greatest pair of investigative reporters that the Daily Planet had ever seen before or since. Naming Superman Clark Kent had obviously been Alfred Wayne's idea of a joke, and she found it to be rather disrespectful of the real Clark Kent. Especially since the real Clark Kent had been a real journalist, not some alien attempting to play human by pretending to be a newspaper reporter.

Sighing, she called Eric into her office.

"You wanted to see me Gabrielle?" Eric said when he arrived.

"I know you're trying to be nice, but if I catch you writing any of Kent's articles again, there will be consequences." she said.

"I didn't write that, Kent did." Eric said, looking and sounding completely honest.

"When did he have the time?" she asked, honestly wondering. She'd seen the man at his desk playing with his computer between "potty breaks", but she hadn't seen him typing anything.

"Over our lunch break." Eric replied, looking slightly awed as his mind called up the memory. "He's the fastest damn typist I've ever seen. Hundred words a minute at the very least. The computer almost couldn't keep up with him."

Gabrielle groaned. The last thing she needed was for it to get out that her newspaper had hired Superman. If that ever got out, they'd be the world's biggest laughingstock.


	5. UnConventional

Superman sighed as he pulled on his jacket, mentally preparing himself for the day. Since the furniture had already been delivered, and the cable and internet had already been hooked up, there were no excuses for why he shouldn't stay in the apartment that the brat in the bat parka had secured for him when he'd set up his new identity remaining. He would be "moving" into the apartment today after work.

Alfred Wayne had invested a considerable sum of money in his little scheme to get him to reconnect with the world. Obtaining an identity that could stand up to scrutiny which was complete with little things like an internet presence and legitimate excuses for why he'd missed every photo day at school from pre-school to his high school graduation, even if he had to create it himself, couldn't have come cheap. Then there was the apartment, the furniture, the linens, the appliances, the wardrobe, and the advance he'd been given for incidentals until he'd gotten his first paycheck. The brat may have easily been able to throw that large a sum of money at a long shot without thinking about it, may have even considered it his civic duty to do so, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't pay every penny of that money back somehow.

If the Wayne boy's whole experiment didn't blow up in everybody's faces, he would earn every penny of his paycheck, and just about everything that didn't go towards food, hygiene supplies, and bribing sources would be going to Alfred until everything was payed off and he was no longer-beholden to him. If the experiment blew up the way he believed it would eventually do, most-likely ending in some sort of media circus, he'd find some other way of repaying the brat who'd convinced him that he needed to at least try to reconnect with humanity because Clark Kent had been part of what had made him so great in his younger years. If worst came to worst, he'd completely ignored dropped currency, leaving it for someone else to find and pick up, any number of times. It wouldn't be the first time he'd used that method when he was a little short, though he usually waited until he was completely broke when he did.

After checking himself in the mirror, noting that his appearance was acceptable, and the suit was completely hidden by his over-sized clothes the way it used to be, he stepped out of the Fortress for what could be the last time for a while. There was a time when he wouldn't have been able to fly very fast while wearing his civilian attire, but over the years, that had changed. Now, it was entirely possible that he could wear a circus elephant as a scarf and fly at a speed approaching the speed of light, and it wouldn't get shredded. Not that that mattered, aside from the fact that his clothes wouldn't be the least bit rumpled when he arrived at the Ledger, unless he wanted them to be as part of his Clark Kent persona.

He'd briefly considered going with messy hair as Clark Kent, seeing as it was pretty much considered acceptable for a young man to do in the modern era, but had found himself automatically grabbing his comb and putting it in the style he'd worn it in for decades as Kent on the first day. He knew that after establishing such precedent, he couldn't change to a more modern look for a while at least if he ever managed to break old habits. Either way, that didn't really matter.

What mattered at the moment was getting to work on time, which he did.

Hernandez's greeting for him when he'd arrived for his third day at the Ledger had been "If you were older, I'd suggest that you go and get a prostate exam."

There was a briefly frozen moment following this statement, and an "_Excuse me_?" as he tried to figure out exactly why the man would make such a highly personal comment which could have been taken as innuendo considering.

"You went to the bathroom five times yesterday, and aside from the coffee yesterday morning and that Coke you spat out after the first sip before looking at it like it had personally betrayed you at lunch, I didn't see you drink anything." Hernandez replied, looking at him as if he were slightly worried.

Superman, who was still playing Clark because he still couldn't feel Clark aside from one or two Clarkish moments such as the Coke incident, scrambled for an answer. He'd expected to get away with forming a reputation for having a bladder the size of a walnut the way he did a long while back, but now, if Hernandez' reaction was any indication, such things were likely to spark concern over the state of his health rather than jokes. Remembering the fact that the Men's room at the Ledger was the sort with urinals and stalls, rather than those single occupant things that locked when occupied that seemed to have become increasingly popular, he hit on a likely excuse.

"I have a shy bladder." he said, feeling a vague almost Clarkish sense of embarrassment at the excuse. "If there's anyone nearby..."

"Understandable." Hernandez replied with a shrug, apparently deciding to let it go.

With that, both men turned to their desks to check their e-mail. Why Hernandez checked his on his computer when he could do so on his phone, he didn't know. It was probably a part of a daily routine that had been established more than a decade prior. Either that, or it was probably to kill time while waiting for a lead on a story he was working on. The reason he was checking his own e-mail on his work computer was because he wouldn't have a computer of his own until that evening. Even now, he was limiting himself to his work account rather than the most likely virtually empty personal one that the brat in the bat parka had set up for him. Not everyone at the Ledger was even half as professional. From what he could see during his glance around the room which had a rather open floor plan and marks on the floor from where the walls of cubicles had once rested, several people were watching videos, listening to music, and playing brightly colored games at what were supposed to be workstations.

"I know this is probably going to sound cruel considering, but you should drink more water. Dehydration can lead to some serious health problems." Hernandez said as he clicked on something, probably either opening an e-mail or emptying his Spam folder as he had just done when he'd seen that everything that had been automatically filtered into it had been worthless.

The variety of things people would send when they didn't have to pay printing costs or postage almost amazed him. Computer viruses, advertisements for everything from pornography to student loans from around the world, pictures of cats on which something that was meant to be amusing had been typed...

"I'll keep that in mind." he replied to Hernandez as he searched for the Gotham University website and started fishing around for the internet version of the student message boards. He'd learned long ago that stories could be found in places that many people would find unusual. A few of his stories back when he'd been working at the Planet had come about when he'd done a careful study of the things posted on a student message board back at Met. U. The kids who'd been trying to sell drugs back then apparently hadn't realized that there was nothing new under the sun, and that someone who'd been bootlegging back during his college days had tried something that was virtually identical.

Looking at the site that was set up for the students of Gotham U, he couldn't find anything that looked like a genuine advertisement for the sale of drugs, but he did find what looked like a very serious case of what was called "Cyberbullying". The relative anonymity of the internet gave people the freedom to say things to people online that they would normally never say to another person's face, much like that joke about the General and the Private that ends with the Private asking the General if he knew who he was, getting a "No", and then running off. Much of what was said in this anonymous forum where seemingly everybody wore a mask was downright ugly, and that general ugliness which seemed to be seeping out into the real world more and more each passing day occasionally had some very serious real-world consequences.

Knowing that he couldn't defend the young woman who was being targeted in the forum she was being targeted in because he wasn't a student at the university and therefore couldn't get an account with the site, he looked up the Student Counselor, got her e-mail address, and sent her an e-mail alerting her to the problem. That deed done, he started drafting a general article on cyberbullying which seemed to be a relatively hot topic considering the number of times he'd heard the word brought up in recent years, deciding to keep the young woman's name out of it, since he knew that she likely didn't want and wouldn't react well to finding her name in the evening paper.

As he was halfway through the third paragraph of his first draft which he was typing a bit more slowly than he had the article he'd typed up the day before due to his new Editor in Chief's warnings, he found Hernandez standing at his shoulder.

"You know, no-one is going to print that unless something happens." Hernandez said almost regretfully, causing him to pause in his work. "Anyway, Gabrielle has given us an assignment, so we need to go."

On the way down, he tried to split up with Hernandez again.

"You have your own car?" Hernandez asked, looking rather curious.

"I prefer to walk." he replied.

"But, the convention center is miles from here!" Hernandez exclaimed.

"And, with how bad traffic is in Gotham, I'll probably arrive before you." he replied, knowing that "probably" was actually "Most definitely", and that he was going to be making at least one rescue on the way.

That, and seeing if there was at least one country in the world where the Coke that he remembered from his younger years hadn't been ruined. What they'd been thinking when they'd tweaked the recipe and put a corn based sweetener in it, he didn't know.

* * *

Eric Hernandez frowned when he got to the convention center only to find the newbie waiting for him. The man who had his press pass clipped to the front of his coat was drinking Coke out of a glass bottle with foreign writing on it, which he thought was rather strange considering the fact that the only Cokes that came in glass bottles in Gotham were the Mexican ones that they'd recently started selling at grocery stores.

Shelving that little mystery for later, he went over to Kent, bracing himself for what was to come since he wasn't all that nuts about Star Trek. Attending a convention wasn't exactly his idea of fun, which, come to think of it, was probably why Gabrielle had sent him. At least with him, she knew that he'd be working here, rather than goofing off and maybe going home to grab his costume in order to join in.

Off to the side, there was a news van that was disgorging crew and equipment. Unlike him, the reporter who was standing next to the van seemed to be happy to have the opportunity to put on a pair of Spock ears for her segment, which was probably why she'd been sent. With a visual medium like television news, the more the reporter was looking like they were having fun at such an event, the better the publicity the event would get. A fun loving individual and/or avid Star Trek fan was the ideal sort of reporter to send to such an event.

Beside him, he could hear a slight snort.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"She looks like Cat." Kent replied.

"Cat?" he asked, wondering if Kent was ready to divulge another scant detail about his mysterious past which he hadn't really talked about over the two days and change that he'd known him.

"A woman I used to know." Kent replied in his usual toneless manner, all amusement over the female reporter's resemblance to this Cat person apparently gone.

The conversation over, they both headed inside, and it wasn't only him who viewed the proceedings with disinterest. From what he could see, the newbie wasn't a Star Trek fan either, though he didn't make any disparaging remarks about the show and remained completely professional at all times. Strangely enough, while Kent was doing interviews, he almost seemed human. Sure, there was a little something missing, but it wasn't as blatant as it usually was.

As he watched, Kent even helped an elderly man with a walker into a chair. Rather than thanking the young man who robotically displayed manners that were becoming increasingly rare in this day and age, the old man looked up at Kent and said "If I didn't know any better _Mr. Kent_, I'd swear you'd made a deal with the devil.".

"Do I know you?" Kent asked the man rather stiffly.

"Used to be Metropolis P.D. before I got married and moved to Gotham." the old man replied. "Now, I have to resort to begging to get the grandkids to spring me from the nursing home. That place has even better security than Arkham after they finally got serious and removed the revolving door that the Joker had installed as a prank."

Well now, wasn't that..._Interesting_.


	6. A Day for Unwanted Reunions

"Deal with the devil?" Hernandez asked the moment they were alone and away from prying ears, which was surprisingly easy to do in a city of several million souls. The garage at the convention center where the man had parked his car was virtually empty at the moment, mostly because everyone who was going to turn up at the convention today had already turned up, and it wasn't yet time for people to start leaving in droves.

Superman knew this moment had been coming since he'd noticed that Hernandez had been watching him with Simmons whom he'd finally recognized after he'd mentally stripped away the wrinkles and darkened the flyaway white hair to brown. Seeing the avid young police officer who'd asked for his autograph on two occasions like that had reminded him exactly why he'd disengaged from the human race for the most part. Far from being an eager young man who was devoted to serving and protecting his community, Simmons was now at the very end of his all too brief lifespan and he was more devoted to actually seeing the community since he had little opportunity to do so.

"Mister Simmons thought I was the Clark Kent who used to work at the Daily Planet when he was a young man." he said.

What he was leaving out of what he'd told Hernandez was that the reason Mr. Simmons had thought so was because he actually was the Clark Kent who'd worked at the Daily Planet for three decades, a portion of which had coincided with Officer Simmons' youth. While he very rarely if ever outright lied, he was an expert at leaving things out and saying things in a way that implied something else entirely. After nearly a century of practice in the art, he was quite likely as skilled as the elves of legend.

Looking back on the encounter with Simmons, he felt mild curiosity over exactly when the man had become one of the number of people who'd known who he was despite the often ridiculous lengths he'd gone to to keep Clark Kent and Superman separate in people's minds. The man had never let on that he knew back when they had interacted on a semi-regular basis. Back when he used to know every member of Metropolis' finest by name, and had often been able to recite a litany of their relatives' names as well, usually when making an inquiry as to their general health.

"You weren't exactly saying you weren't." Hernandez said, cutting his musings short. "And, that resemblance between you and your grandfather is downright creepy. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear it was you, especially since the only places I've ever seen a case of 'Identical Ancestor' are in films or on TV."

He sighed. This wasn't exactly how he expected the encounter to go. Honestly, he expected Hernandez to either accept his explanation, or pretend to accept his explanation and gather more evidence in case there was a story to be had. Had Hernandez gone the gather more evidence route, he would've done to the man what he'd done to a couple of reporters back when he'd had a secret identity to protect, which was to find and sabotage the physical evidence they'd gathered, and shoot down the circumstantial stuff in such a way that the other reporter looked like an idiot for even suggesting that Clark Kent was Superman.

Of course, these days, had Hernandez gone the stay silent and gather more evidence route, things could've become slightly more problematic, especially if Hernandez had a friend on the police force. His prints were on file under the name of "Superman" so the police would know to ignore them if they were collected at a crime scene.

The question was, did he want to stay silent and start Hernandez digging until things blew up and ended Alfred's little experiment far earlier than the brat in the bat parka who'd gone to so much trouble had hoped? Living the way he had been for the last few decades was familiar, and had almost become comfortable to him since he didn't have to face little things like the much shorter lifespans of the humans that surrounded him. But, he still remembered how he'd wanted to be an example for people to strive towards like his father had wanted him to be. He couldn't be that example if he was cold, distant, and completely disengaged from the race he was supposed to lead into the sun as it were, and his becoming Clark Kent again was supposed to reengage him with his adopted race.

Perhaps if he got Hernandez thinking his secret was something else...

There was a great deal of science and technology that had been far in advance of its time which was lost when a certain young idiot had thought going around smashing up the lab was the best way to defeat a mad scientist who more often than not died at the hands of his own malfunctioning creations sometime during the destruction, leaving almost nothing salvageable behind. As a result of his more destructive phase, there were any number of scientists in any number of fields who absolutely despised Superman for setting robotics, genetics, cryogenics, and god only knew what else back by several decades if not centuries.

Human cloning had already been done, as had Kryptonian cloning, and Human-Kryptonian hybridization. Unfortunately, thanks to Superman and a rather inconveniently placed computer bank...

Which was a real pity, because it would've rather handily solved the issue with the current dry spell when it came to "Superheroes". The Twenties through the Seventies had been something of a golden age for people with masks and superpowers. Then, they all started dying off in the line of duty or retiring for various reasons - mostly due to age - with few if any to replace them as many of the situations that had created them in the first place were irreplicable. All that was left from that era were a couple of immortals or near-immortals like himself, and a couple of continuing legacies that hadn't yet died out without a successor to replace them, all of which he'd basically disengaged from when he'd mostly disengaged from the world.

Sure, there was the occasional team-up when the situation called for it, but usually, he kept himself to himself in the Fortress when he wasn't on duty and everyone but the brat in the bat parka had known not to drop by and make any social calls. The legacies who'd taken over their predecessors' (sometimes literally so) positions after the Seventies and pretty much only knew him as he was now usually didn't even think to try visiting, and certainly never invited him to little things like a post-mission breakfast/lunch/dinner/drink/snack. Compared to the average human, a superhero tended to have an active lifespan more on par with that of a mayfly unless they were immortal or had a revolving door to the afterlife, and he had a nasty habit of referring to the legacies by their ordinal number to their faces. Being legacies, people like Nightwing #6 for instance didn't like to be reminded that they were mortal and that someone else would be taking their place after they were gone, quite likely in the line of duty.

Realizing he'd been stalling way too long due to the fact that he'd somehow briefly gotten himself lost in a past he usually ignored these days, he formulated an answer to Hernandez's accusation. An answer that was a factually true statement, but implied something completely false in regards to him.

"Not all of those cloning hoaxes from the Twentieth Century were actually hoaxes." he finally said to Hernandez who'd been standing there looking at him impatiently.

Hernandez's expression shifted from impatience to shock to something akin to pity as he accepted this explanation. What remained to be seen was whether Hernandez would continue to buy this explanation or if he was the sort who'd pick it apart and keep looking for the real answer. Many people, once given an explanation which fits, will mentally toss out any information that doesn't fit with the explanation given. Others however would hold onto any incongruity and then demand the truth at the most inopportune moment, often angrily resenting the person who'd given the explanation for "lying to them".

"Ouch." Hernandez finally said before dropping the subject and opening the driver's side door of his car. "You coming with me, or are you going to walk again?"

"I'm going to walk again." he said, not wanting to be confined in a car and transported a few short miles at a tediously slow pace. Since his return to society, he'd rediscovered his strong dislike of being confined in enclosed spaces, cars and elevators being chief amongst these.

"Suit yourself." Hernandez said with a shrug before climbing into the driver's seat of his car, slamming the door, and muttering "If_ I _were the clone of a famous newspaper reporter, I'd become a lighthouse keeper or something." as he put his key in the ignition, watching him walk away in the rear-view mirror as he did so.

As soon as Hernandez had passed him on his way out of the parking garage, he turned up the speed, fairly flew out of the garage himself, blew past any number of pedestrians, found a convenient spot, and took off into the air. Hearing the sounds of a pitched battle, he sped off in the direction the noise was coming from, and found the current Nightwing facing off against the latest Luthor wannabe.

"Oh great, it's him." the Nightwing grumbled as he came in and dealt with the situation with fewer casualties than there would've been if he'd left the Nightwing who'd had it mostly in hand to deal with things himself before turning and heading back in the direction of Gotham. "Oh great, it's him." was one of the more polite responses he'd gotten from the current generation of "Superheroes". Usually, the "great" was replaced with an expletive during the few times a year or so he'd bothered to interact with the current generation.

Despite his little detour, and the after-battle mop-up which had included giving a brief statement to local law enforcement, he arrived at the office before Hernandez. Part of the reason he arrived before Hernandez despite the fact that the battle between the current Nightwing and his apparent Arch-Nemesis looked to be a high-profile one was that the press had pretty much long since stopped asking for quotes after he'd pretty much stopped giving them unless there was an immediate need-to-know, such as if public safety was at stake.

As he approached his desk, he noticed that there was someone standing next to it waiting for him. Someone with an all too familiar smile. A smile that only showed when that someone had yet again been pushed into the gutter or worse, and didn't want to give the bullies who'd done it the satisfaction of seeing him cry. The face that smile was set in was now lined with age however, and the head of shiny black hair that had topped it had become a steel grey.

Today it would seem was a day for unwanted reunions.

Clark Kent's children, or one of them at least, apparently hadn't reached the end of their natural lifespans, though said end was obviously fast approaching. Clark Kent had deeply cared for the children he and Lois had adopted, but he...he...what? As Superman, he'd always compartmentalized that part of his life, trying to keep the thoroughly human and therefore exceedingly fragile Christopher and Margaret out of his duties as Superman. As long as everyone thought of them as Clark Kent's children and he didn't treat them in a way that showed that he cared for them above any others while he was Superman, it made his enemies less likely to attack them in order to get to him.

Though he was sort of trying to bring him back if only to see if he could become the hero he apparently no-longer was in anyone's eyes, Clark Kent was gone, and so too was that relationship. It wasn't like forty-five years of complete absence, forty-five years of missed Christmases and birthdays, and his completely ignoring the births of his grandchildren, great-grandchildren and possibly even great-great grandchildren would ever be forgiven or forgotten. Even if he wanted to be their father again, wanted to be part of the family again, Christopher and Margaret's time was almost up and their descendants were complete strangers to him.


	7. Where To Go From Here

Deciding to get this, whatever this would turn out to be - be it an angry confrontation, or a tearful attempt at reunion that ends in disappointment - over with, Superman made his way towards Christopher. Looking at the man now, he could see elements of the boy that he and Lois had brought home from the orphanage more than sixty-five years before.

Well, actually it had been Clark and Lois.

Clark who'd been caught up in the post-war excitement following the end of the Second World War had asked Lois whom he'd been dancing around and who'd been dancing around him for years to marry him. Much to his joy and surprise, Lois had said yes, yes to Clark as Clark and not Superman, and he'd learned that a great deal of the reason their relationship had come to a virtual standstill during the war had been the war. During the war, both of them had been frequently going into danger in order to get a story, such as the time they'd been in Japan and Lois had nearly been executed because of his sabotage of Japanese military assets, and the time they'd traveled with an American convoy which had been about to come under attack by the Nazis, and Lois had nearly died warning the fleet. Lois had been afraid that one or the other of them would die and leave the other alone, and had decided it best to keep him at arm's length in order to keep the pain of that potential loss at a minimum. With the war over, there had been nothing to keep them apart and they had practically eloped, much to the surprise of everyone at the Daily Planet except Jimmy and Perry who'd been wondering when they'd pull their heads out of their respective asses and get it over with.

Following the wedding during which he'd been given the shovel speech by General Sam Lane himself, he and Lois had almost immediately started trying for a child, since Lois had been afraid that being in her early thirties made her a little too old. She'd been called an old maid enough times back in those days when being unmarried at twenty-five was considered to be really pushing it, and it was widely believed that if a woman didn't marry by the time she was thirty she would never marry that she had believed there was a legitimate reason for why women were uncouraged to marry young and start having children young. In this case however, it had been his fault and not Lois' that they hadn't had children of their own.

They'd tried. They'd tried for two years straight, until the day something happened. It hadn't been the blessed event they'd been hoping for however. Lois had been feeling ill for the entire week before the miscarriage that had nearly killed her, and he'd wondered why that was right up until he'd come home from saving a bus full of schoolchildren whose elderly driver had had a heart attack at the wheel and found her collapsed on the living-room floor. After that day, they'd quit trying for a child of their own. It hadn't put an end to their desire to be parents and raise a family though.

In the spring 1948, Lois had been open to the suggestion of adoption. She'd wanted a baby at that point, and there had been an agency that would've given them one and a newborn at that...for a sizable fee of course. She had been willing to pay the money, but he had persuaded her to have a look through the local orphanages first before she paid for something which may not have actually been entirely legal considering how much money the people who had newborn babies on offer were asking for. He wasn't about to hand their money over to a baby mill or worse when there were millions of children around the world who needed homes.

It had been while they'd been touring the orphanage which was ostensibly run by the city, but only kept its doors open due to the generous donations of a number of wealthy, semi-wealthy, and sometimes even not-so-wealthy benefactors due to the fact that the money they received from the municipal, state, and federal governments didn't cover all of their expenses that he and Lois had met Christopher. When they'd met Christopher, his name had been Hikaru and his parents who'd emigrated from Japan in the '30s and had ironically ended up meeting each-other in an internment camp had recently died in a car accident which had taken place while he'd been rescuing a number of fishermen from their sinking boat several-hundred miles north of them. Following the deaths of his parents, the local authorities had been completely unable to find his closest living relatives, and the child had been too young to be of any help in giving them any clues as to whether or not there actually were any outside of Japan. Christopher had been a bright and engaging child, and due to the dearth of Japanese-Americans in the area, the odds of him being adopted were far, far, slimmer than they would've been for most of the other children in the orphanage.

Lois had been as charmed by Christopher as he. When it came to the issue of adopting "outside their race" which was far more of an issue than it really should've been back then...Well, he wasn't exactly human, his parents had adopted an alien and kept it after it became apparent that the child would never be normal, and Lois had married said alien whom she'd learned was an alien when they'd become engaged, if she hadn't known before then and just gone along with things because she knew he preferred to keep Superman and Clark Kent separate. What had mattered then was that Christopher had needed a home, they had the ability to provide one, and they were willing to do so.

Two years after they'd brought Christopher into their home and found themselves constantly dealing with a bunch of xenophobic idiots, and people who weren't exactly idiots, but weren't exactly ready to let the war go so soon, he and Lois had found Margaret. For a time after that, when it had been he, Lois, Christopher, and Margaret, their family had been complete. It wasn't perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was complete.

While Christopher and Margaret were growing up into a pair of wonderful adults who were beginning to make their way in life when he'd finally left them, both he and Lois had worked out of the house, with him being absent far more often than Lois was due to his duties as Superman. There had been any number of missed events and important events he or sometimes Lois had turned up late to, and Perry had joked that Christopher and Margaret spent so much time at the Planet that they should get salaries of their own, but they had managed. There were times however, that he thought that the children had grown up into the people they were in spite of him, rather than because of him.

Considering the fact that they had apparently continued being who they were after he'd left and broken off all contact, seeing as Christopher was standing there in front of his desk, this was likely the case.

"Hello Christopher." he said when he was within arm's reach, and therefore striking distance of the man he'd...Clark had called son.

"Hello." Christopher said, that "I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of seeing me cry" look still firmly in place. At the age of seventy, it made him look far sterner and far more stoic than it had when he'd been a young boy who'd been stuck spending his entire childhood dealing with bullies.

"We should probably go somewhere else to talk." he said, making a gesture that encompassed the newsroom and a newly-arrived Hernandez who was giving him a curious look as he made his way to his desk. Turning, he started heading towards the elevator, confident that Christopher would follow.

As he led the way, he wondered exactly where he could take Clark's son. Heading to the nearest Starbucks didn't seem at all appropriate, despite the fact that the old man trailing behind him and surprisingly rapidly catching up to him had grown to be a virtual stranger in the more than forty-five years since he'd seen him. This conversation just didn't seem to be the sort that one would have over coffee, and there was the fact that he'd...Clark had...he'd called this man son for twenty years before he'd left. He didn't feel comfortable bringing Christopher back to the apartment he'd technically not yet moved into though, which left the question of where to go, especially since he was currently in a city that he didn't know like the back of his hand the way he used to know Metropolis.

To his left, Christopher who'd decided to try keeping pace with him rather than trailing after him like a small child started laughing.

"What is it?" he asked, wondering what Christopher had found to be so amusing about this tense and admittedly very awkward encounter.

"You have the same look on your face as you did when you took Margaret bra shopping for the first time." Christopher said, amusement flashing in his dark eyes.

He remembered that day, the day that he'd been forced to confront the fact that Margaret wouldn't remain a child forever, when Lois had been away on assignment and it had been up to him to see to the Back-to-School clothes shopping for the children. Christopher had been easy to shop for. Margaret however, not so much, especially when there seemed to be some sort of problem with the fit of all of the shirts he'd selected for her. Eventually, he'd realized exactly why that was, and he'd found himself completely lost in the women's section of the department store wondering exactly what would be an appropriate brassiere for a twelve year-old. The fact that the salesgirl kept giving him looks that told him he clearly didn't belong there hadn't helped matters at all.

"I don't see how this situation compares to bra shopping." he said as he reached the elevator bank and pressed the down button next to the nearest elevator.

Christopher gave another laugh and said, "It doesn't, but you have the exact same look".

The elevator arrived then, putting an end to the conversation for now. As he stepped into the elevator, he found that he was once again confronted with the problem of exactly where he was going, and what he was going to say when they got there.

"Still don't like elevators, huh?" Christopher said, breaking the silence when they were halfway to the first floor.

"What gives you that idea?" he asked.

"You used to have a bad habit of "accidentally" breaking them, and right now you're giving the door to this one the death glare sans heat beams." Christopher replied.

The conversation petered out after this, and eventually the elevator stopped and the doors opened, releasing them from its confined interior. As soon as he stepped out of the Elevator and into the building's main lobby, he found that he still didn't know where to go from here.


	8. Dual Retreat

Christopher sighed as he trailed after the man he'd called father who looked just as lost as he did when he'd "died" nearly forty-six years before. Part of him wanted to be angry at the man, to curse him out for abandoning him and Margaret, but every time he took in that lost half shut-down look, he found himself unable to be angry.

There had been a period of time when he'd almost hated his father for adopting him in the first place and blamed him for every bad thing that had happened to him since the adoption, citing the fact that just about every last one of the problems he'd had growing up had stemmed from the fact that he'd obviously been adopted and had been the only Asian kid in the neighborhood. Part of the reason he'd joined the military in '69 had been because it was something Clark Kent wouldn't have done, and because, aside from rescuing civilians from battlezones, Superman had stopped interfering in wars since Korea, tending to let the humans fight it out until they grew sick of fighting. After enlisting, he'd been sent to Vietnam where he'd been completely ignored by his father who had passed through to scoop up random villagers and put out fires. While he'd been on leave in Japan during that tour of duty, he'd started learning Japanese in order to have a connection with what the angry young man he'd been back then had considered his "real people".

Truth be told, he'd been bitter, angry and almost completely aimless throughout almost the entirety of the Sixties, even before his mom died and he had the absent being who only went through the motions, occasionally drifting in and out of the house to make sure he and Margaret hadn't died or burnt the house down while he was away, to pin this anger on. That anger had continued into the Seventies before it had mostly burnt itself out. By the time his anger had burnt itself out, he had almost completely ruined his life.

Angry and wandering through life with no particular direction in mind was a bad thing to be, especially when one has a young family that's starting to disintegrate much like society had seemed to have been doing during the Sixties and Seventies. When he'd come home to find his wife gone, his son gone, and divorce papers waiting for him, it had not been his father's fault, and he knew it. He'd been the one who'd made the choice to leave his family in order to go off and fight in a war he hadn't needed to fight all on his own. He had been the one who'd left his family behind this time and, rather than waiting for him to come back, they had left him in return.

Coming home to find his family gone because he'd left them had brought him up short. Even though his wife had returned for a time, his marriage had never recovered from his angry period which could've continued for the rest of his life if he'd allowed it to, but he had done his best to visit his son as often as he could, even after the woman he'd promised Forever to had remarried.

Eventually, he too had remarried and the son he made sure to never be more than a phonecall away from was joined with half-siblings from his side of the family as well as his mother's. Part of what had allowed him to move on and start a new family had been acknowledging the fact that while the body was still there flying around the planet rescuing people, the man who had raised him as his own, the man who'd taken him to baseball games and helped him with his homework even when he looked about dead on his feet had curled up and died at some point soon after the woman he called mother had passed.

It had been nearly four decades since he'd accepted his father's death, and started moving on from it as anyone would move on from the death of a loved one. Now, here his father was, back from the dead, and part of him dearly wanted to punch him while another part of him which saw his father was just as lost as he had been five decades ago wanted to reach out to the man. He could now see why it might not be such a good thing to have a loved one return from the dead. The little mental pedestal you put them on as your mind starts erasing their faults abruptly gets knocked over the second you see them again, and the relationship returns right back to where it had been when they had passed on.

The moment he'd followed his father out of the building that housed the Gotham Ledger, his father's face took on that utterly lost and vaguely panicked expression that it had had when he'd wandered through the lingerie department with an absolutely mortified Margaret trailing behind him over fifty years ago. Just about every time his face didn't have that expression, it would slip back to that emotionless Superman mask which seemed to be his current default expression. An expression which looked as utterly wrong on the man with the glasses and the differently combed hair which identified him as Clark Kent as the lost and vaguely panicked one did.

Searching for something to say, since talking to his father caused the lost expression on his face to vanish for a moment as he concentrated on him, he fished around his mind for a topic on which they could converse. A topic that hopefully wouldn't end in an argument which would more than likely cause his father to shut down and retreat the way just about every other argument he'd had with his father since his mother's death had done.

"Nice weather we're having." he finally said, having latched onto what was probably the most neutral subject in existence aside from "hello". He got a slightly incredulous look in return. Looking up at the sky for the first time since they'd set foot outside, he noticed that it was completely overcast. He winced internally. His father needed the sun and cloudy days tended to be his worst days, the days when he had the least amount of energy until he finally took as much of it as he could, flew off above the cloud cover, and started chasing the sun. Saying what he'd just said, it would've almost sounded like...

God, he may as well have said "Why don't you just curl up and die?".

Before he could apologize, he noticed that his father had gone and retreated again. That blank look had returned, and for a second it had looked as if his father was about to fly off and leave him standing there unable to follow. Instead of flying off however, his father seemingly came to a decision of some sort and picked a direction. Sighing since he knew there was no use talking to his father when he was like this, he followed. Eventually, the both of them reached the destination his father had picked.

"The train station?" he asked, a sinking feeling in his gut telling him they hadn't come here to watch trains.

"I'm sorry Christopher." his father said, the look he had when he was in full retreat and about to run off rather than finish the argument in his eyes. "I can't...I just can't."

Even though he knew better than to expect much, especially in the beginning, disappointment settled in his stomach like a lead weight. He didn't know what the right thing to do was at the moment. Should he continue trying to talk to him despite the fact that he was in full retreat and would only run off, or should he let his father have his space and try again later. Seeing the Superman mask drop over his father's features and realizing that while the man was wearing Clark Kent's clothes, it was Superman he was looking at, he decided to do the latter, praying that he wasn't making a big mistake.

He would let his father have his space.

For now.

He heard a bit of a whoosh behind him as he turned towards the ticket counter. Sighing, he made his way to the counter and purchased a ticket back home. Once the purchase was made, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call.

"How did it go?" Margaret asked when she answered.

"Horribly." he replied.

She sighed.

"I'm not giving up this time though." he said.

* * *

Gabrielle frowned as she watched Superman make his way to his desk, having returned from wherever he'd taken his "guest". There was a rumor going round that he'd shown actual emotion rather than faking it when he'd been with the stranger that he'd left with. Looking at him now, she could see that there was something slightly off about his movements. They were still as almost mechanically precise as usual, but there was something different about him now which she couldn't quite put her finger on.

Considering how much power he had and how much destruction he could cause if he snapped, different could be a bad sign. A very bad sign.

Wondering if Alfred Wayne had just put her and everyone else in danger for the sake of his own amusement, he called Eric into her office. After saving his work, he left his desk and answered her summons.

"You wanted to see me Gabrielle?" Eric said when he arrived.

"Look, I haven't seen anything to give me grounds to ask Kent to leave, and it's possible that I'm worrying over nothing" she started. "But, if he starts showing any...anomalous behavior, I want you to report it to me."

Eric gave her a long look before nodding and saying "Understood".

"Thank you." she said, dismissing him so he could get back to work.

As he left she heard him grumble something that sounded suspiciously like "Shoulda been a lighthouse keeper".

Deciding that she probably didn't want to know, she did her best to get back to her own work despite the potential danger looming over everybody's unsuspecting heads.


End file.
